Hey, i just recently decided to revive an older computer i've had lying around, and i found out that the AGP port on it will support newer AGP cards, but the CPU on this computer is an old PIII processor clocked at 800mhz. The maximum amount of ram it will handle is 512 and it has that installed now, and the BIOS won't allow for any cpu overclocking, so how much of a bottleneck will this be to any new GPU i get. I'm not looking for a top of the line card, more around the area of a new low-end model that will speed up the computer and allow for DX9 support at least. Would i just be completely throwing money away to get a new low-end GPU, or with these specs could it make a nice difference?

If you're talking low end cards like the 9600XT then that's fine.

Exactly. a nice $40-50 card that can play DX9 games on minimum. It will be a great improvement over the Riva TNT2 Pro card i have now anyway. Thanks

Wait, I've just got another question. I was looking for AGP cards and discovered an AGP 7600GS for $70 and a 9600XT for like $50. I know the 7600 is much better than a 9600, but how bottlenecked would it be with a PIII. (another note, i found a new PIII for $15 that is 1.13Ghz that i'm probally getting) I know i won't be able to use this card to its full potential, but its just $20 more and it would be much better that a 9600XT as long as its not too bottlenecked

Oh and my AGP port only gets up to 4x if that helps any.

Stick to the 9600 plan & no need sinking money on a CPU upgrade either.

The cost of the CPU upgrade might not seem like much but I doubt you'd be eager to light the cash on fire or flush it down the crapper on a whim.

The 1.13GHz is a Tualatin P3. You need to make sure that your motherboard is compatible with it. Sure, the Tualatin P3 and Coppermine P3 (the 800MHz is a Coppermine) are both Socket 370 parts, but the Tualatin uses a much lower voltage.

If your board does support Tualatins, then go for it! They are much, much faster than the older Coppermine P3s.

I myself have a Tualatin 1.4 with the full 512KB cache, overlocked to 1.63GHz, and it's just as fast as a P4 2.5GHz in the 3DMark 03 CPU test.

95% of AGP cards being sold today work in 4X slots. The 9600XT and 7600GS are both a part of that 95%, so you're fine. If you decide to go with the 7600GS, make sure your power supply is capable of driving the power-hungry video card.

Pentium III--Descendant of Intel Core.
Pentium III-S 1400 @ 1.63GHz, 512K L2
X800XT AIW OC 580/600
2GB of RAM
250GB HD
SB Audigy 2
QDI Advance 12 mobo
Smugly running Vista

how can i tell if this mobo will support Tualatin processors? the mobo is a gateway OEM board that was manufactured in 2000. It sounds like if this mobo supports Tualatin processors, i can squeeze a few more years of usefulness out of this comp, but if not, i'll probally just put a 9600 in it and use it as a backup system.

Bad news. ran Everest and my mobo doesn't support Tualatin processors. Now I'm torn. This little project started out as a revival project for fun, but now i'm trying to make somewhat of a decent gaming system for my bro to use. He's using an x600 mobile and AMD +4000 on his laptop, so i guess my question now shifts

its will a PIII coppermine @800mhz and 512 SDram w/ 7600GS AGP can outperform his mobility x600/AMD +4000@2.6ghz and 1gig of DDR ram at gaming. Not speaking of loading times or desktop performance, but strictly in rendering performance and FPS. The main game he plays is COD2 online w/DX9 render and gets awful framerates. I know a 7600GS can easily out do an x600, but will this PIII cancel out all of its rendering benefits?

Just have your brother run COD2 on the faster (AMD) system with the x600 & use DX7 rendering path & NOT DX9 - he should get a performance boost in COD2.

i've told him that, but he refuses to go back to DX7 saying DX9 looks way better, plus he plays other games like Oblivion and Stalker on minimum and a 7600GS would allow these games on at least medium quality if the PIII doesn't bottleneck it too bad. He also wanted to play Vegas and Double Agent which requires SM3.0 and the x600 can't play them at all. a 7600GS with a crippled comp can at least play them on minimum.

This thread keeps going on and on, and I'm sorry about that but i have another question. After researching a bit i see that an adapter has been made to convert the 370 coppermine socket to allow tualatin processors to work in them but everywhere i look for them they are sold out. Does anybody know where i can find one of these adapters? also if anybody can point me in the direction of a 1.4ghz tualatin PIII, i would be very grateful. I found a 1.13 for $15 which is nice, but all the 1.4's i've found are like in the $100 range, which is ridiculous.

Hey, I payed $120 for my Tualatin 1.4 in 2005. Call me crazy if you wish. :P

(To me) it was definitely worth it, though. I've got it housed in one of those stylish home theatre cases, and overclocked to 1.63GHz, it outperforms (and runs cooler than) the old AMD 2400+ I used to use as a home theatre rig.

If you want an FC-PGA to FC-PGA2 adaptor for use with a Tualatin processor, eBay's your best bet. My motherboard natively supports Tualatins, so I've never had the pleasure of using one of those Tualatin adaptors. But if it's anything like the "brandless" Slocket I used to own (my old Celeron 333 machine), then it could be a nightmare to set up. Hopefully not, though.

The 800MHz Coppermine will most definitely bottleneck the 7600GS, perhaps making parts of the game unplayable even at low settings.
A Tualatin would make it much faster.

When it somes to Tualatins, "A" means 256KB of cache, and "S" means 512KB of cache.

eg:
1.13A GHz = Tualatin 1.13GHz with 256KB cache
1.40S GHz = Tualatin 1.40GHz with 512KB cache.

Though the S versions are rare, they're notably faster (still, the A version would definitely be a nice boost over the Coppermine). For example, the 1.26 "S" performs similarly to a 2.0GHz P4 in many apps. The 1.4 "S" is only a tad slower than the P4 2.2GHz.

Of course, your motherboard only supports up to 512MB of RAM. This could cause heavy "lag" even with the faster processor.

Pentium III--Descendant of Intel Core.
Pentium III-S 1400 @ 1.63GHz, 512K L2
X800XT AIW OC 580/600
2GB of RAM
250GB HD
SB Audigy 2
QDI Advance 12 mobo
Smugly running Vista

i've told him that, but he refuses to go back to DX7 saying DX9 looks way better, plus he plays other games like Oblivion and Stalker on minimum and a 7600GS would allow these games on at least medium quality if the PIII doesn't bottleneck it too bad. He also wanted to play Vegas and Double Agent which requires SM3.0 and the x600 can't play them at all. a 7600GS with a crippled comp can at least play them on minimum."

It never ceases to amaze me how people always misplace their priorities & then whine about not making the right decision afterwards.

Your brother bought what clearly WASN'T a gaming notebook knowing fully well he intends to use the laptop for extensive, older & contemporary gaming, I guess he wasn't listening to you at the time or he just did not consult you. I don't see how come that uninformed decision is excusable while running COD2 in DX7 mode suddenly becomes a taboo for him .... LOL.

The way things are going, you are fixing to repeat the same mistake partly because jackbomb is "wowing" you with the glowing remarks regarding the Tualatin PIII. This is Q2 2007 & the reality is - the world in general & the computing realm in particular hasn't stood still for the last five years - what jackbomb has is called an obsession & nothing more - you can even see the evidence of that in his $120 Tualatin purchase of 2005 .... LOL

If you want to dump money on what is essentially a dead end platform in your pursuit of making a good gaming system out of it & bemoan your fate later that's totally your choice.

A couple of facts here though are - on the one hand you've got a notebook that's good but very mediocre as far as gaming is concerned (because of its graphics adapter) that you can't do anything about. On the other hand, you've got an antique PIII that at the very best can only be brought up to the level of a very mediocre machine despite jackbomb's optimistic comments about the processor.

What to do? Well, understand the performance limitations of your hardware & live with it. I wouldn't put anything more than the 9600XT on the PIII machine & I wouldn't be expecting to run newer titles on it at glorious details. Neither would I also invest any more money in any other kind of upgrades for the system. If you want to go ahead with a CPU upgrade, RAM, the 7600GS & possibly a new PSU .... good luck with it - just know that what that is is like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound.

I was thinking the exact same thing Sabertooth. The PIII was a great processor 4 or 5 years ago, but today no amount of overclocking can put it on par with todays better designed CPU architectures. After researching a little into newer parts i've found a nice microATX AM2 socket mobo and an AMD 3600+ that is supposed to overclock like crazy. Most people at newegg state that they can get it from its refrence speed of 1.9ghz to 2.6ghz on stock voltage and air cooled! with the combo it comes in, it can be had for just $93.00, comparing to the tulatian PIII at 1.4Ghz of $40+ and the socket needed to use it on my mobo at $35.

so $75.00+ for an old system or $93.00 for up to date system? i'll go with the new parts. The only reason i was considering even upgrading the antiquated PIII system was that i speculated that a near overhaul of a 7 year old system should run me no more than $40 dollars but that simply is not the case. For the money i would be required to spend on these old parts, i could easily add $10 or $20 dollars to purchase up to date parts. the price discrepancy between the two upgrade paths is not as great as i have previously believed it would be. I guess i was driven by a sence of nostalgia to revive this, our first, computer to near modern standards, but for the price, its ridiculous to even try. This computer is destined to live out the remainder of its life in the back of my closet. thanks for the posts everyone, they helped me out quite a bit.

I too have an older CPU and trying to find the right video card for it. My local chain store service center stuck a card that's way too powerful for my CPU (ATI Radeon VisionTek X1950 128mb AGP requiring 450 watts on a Pentium 4 1.3 Ghz using a 250 watt PSU). Didn't find out what why my games were choking until the 14-day warranty expired. Previously I had a ATI Radeon 9800XT 256mb AGP on the machine for years before the VC went bad.

My question for the gurus is: what info do I need to bring with me to the store so I can select the right, most powerful video card that my CPU can support? I now know I need to know the PSU the card requires, but what else? I keep reading about CPU bottleneck but nothing on how to determine it when looking at the VC box on the store shelf.

The game I normally play is "Operation Flashpoint: GOTY edition." If I can find a video card that can handle the graphic requirements of this game, I'll be one happy puppy.